French Symbolists, Roasting Pork, A Good Pinot Noir, A Bite in the Air....it must be.....ah! yes! autumn!

With the tertiary colors favored by the French Symbolists, not to mention the inherent autumnal notion of decadence in their work, it is probably natural to speak of them at the beginning of autumn. Perhaps the rescheduling (it was originally to be July or something), was a bit of Divine Providence (now, if only He would help us with the advertising!).

I love autumn. I like to cook in the autumn. I like to roast pork and saute wild mushrooms and short braise lacinato and bake focaccia and listen to John Coltrane (middle period - the modal stuff like Crescent or the duets with Johnny Hartman) and feel the bite of the evening air. Soon the fall-blooming osmanthus will make that evening air almost intoxicating, especially when tinged with the perfume of fire and rotten leaves. I can start to think of eating polenta without first grilling it in the autumn. The season for heavy cabernet sauvignons is just starting, and I can still get a good tomato (but the writing is on the wall there. We are nearing the end of that). A cigar on the porch with a Scotch. It is time to read denser stuff, too: I am always in the mood to wrestle with Eliot and Pound and Homer in the autumn.

My studio is finally coming into a form that I can see hope in. It is far from ready for work, but I can actually imagine the work space, and have some idea of where everything will go (and some of it has actually started to go where it needs to!). This means that the other website will finally go live, preferably with some new paintings to kick it off with a bang (it has been way too long since a brush of mine, loaded with oil and pigment, touched canvas).

Summer, for me, is hit and miss. If I get it off to a good start, it can be amazingly productive. But, you see, there is this thing called spring, which is a ghastly season for my productivity. Everything is in bloom. Life and excitement are bursting out all over, or however the song goes. The world doesn't really seem to need MY creative energies: look at it. I get very energized by the spring, but rarely do I do my best work in the spring.

Winter is like summer. If it gets off to a good start, with a particularly vigorous autumn, then I will will have a good, productive winter. Winter is a good season for wood working projects, since the trees all look like wood anyway.

So, if you missed the lecture last night, and most of you did, fear not. We are thinking about creating a St. Anthony of Padua Institute art series for television/video. This one will certainly be part of it. And with that, it is time to call the pupil back from recess!